But then, just when she had felt assured of his absence, Stephen had mentioned that he was in the card room and that he hoped to entice him out of there long enough to present him to Meg, who had not yet met him. He was a particular friend of Constantine’s and therefore of Stephen’s.
It had all been very provoking. For how could she have protested and begged Stephen to leave him in the card room where he belonged? He would have wanted to know why. So would Meg.
She had been rather proud of her behavior when Lord Montford had eventually arrived with Stephen. She had remained aloof and slightly frosty without doing or saying anything that might catch her brother and sister’s attention. Meg had been unable to accept his offer to waltz with her since she was to dance the set with Lord Allingham, Stephen had gone off to find Miss Acton, Katherine had expected Mr. Yardley to appear any moment to claim his set, and the ordeal was all but over.
She had acquitted herself well.
Why, then, was she now standing on the dance floor facing Lord Montford, about to waltz with him?
It all defied rational explanation.
She found herself enveloped in a scent so startlingly familiar that she almost expected to see Vauxhall Gardens spread about her instead of the Parmeter ballroom. It was something expensive and musky and utterly masculine-his shaving soap or his cologne. It was a smell that evoked memories of temptation and unbridled passion and humiliation, none of which powerful emotions she had experienced with such intensity either before that night in Vauxhall or since.
And none of which she had the slightest wish to experience ever again.
Lord Montford was just as handsome as she remembered him, with his tall, slim, elegant figure, his dark hair and arrogant eyebrow and lazy eyelids shading keen, mocking, intelligent eyes. Just as handsome, and just as attractive. And just as dangerous-if she were any longer susceptible to that sort of danger.
Which she was not.
The waltz was about to begin. The musicians had readied their instruments, and a slight hush had fallen on the dancers, who were taking their positions.
Lord Montford’s right arm circled her waist, and his hand came to rest against the small of her back. It felt as if it were burning a hole through the satin of her gown. His other hand took hers in a firm, warm clasp. She tried to keep her fingers from touching his hand, but inevitably they curled inward to rest against the back of it. His shoulder beneath her other hand was all solid muscle-as she remembered its being the last time she touched it.
She felt half suffocated with the physicality of it all.
She had never really enjoyed waltzing. She had always found it a little disconcerting to be in close proximity to one gentleman for all of half an hour, and a little tedious to have to make polite conversation exclusively with him. Of course, she had always guessed that with the right partner the whole experience could be gloriously romantic.
Lord Montford was definitely not the right partner.
She glared at him, as if he had just verbally claimed that he was.
“I suppose,” she said, “your intention is to lead Stephen astray while he is still young and foolish?”
Both his eyebrows arched upward.
“And make a degenerate rake of him?” he said. “But of course. Why else would I have befriended him? It could not possibly be because he is the cousin of one of my closest friends, could it? And is Merton foolish as well as being young? That does not say much for the upbringing your eldest sister has provided for him.”
She had walked into that trap with wide open eyes.
“I ought to have chosen my words with more care,” she said crossly. “I ought to have used the word impressionable rather than foolish.”
“But is there any real difference?” he asked her. “Is not an impressionable man a foolish man? A weak man? Can I possibly corrupt your brother if he is determined to be incorruptible?”
“I do not know,” she said. “Can you?”
He could easily have corrupted her.
It seemed that not a muscle in his face moved. But his eyes smiled suddenly and wickedly from beneath his heavy eyelids, a change that had an immediate and quite unwelcome effect upon her knees.
“But why would I wish to?” he asked. “Have you made me into the devil incarnate in your imagination, Miss Huxtable?”
“Is it imagination?” she asked him.
He chuckled softly. “But you have already admitted to having found a modicum of decency in me,” he said. “The devil is surely incapable of anything remotely good. It is a contradiction in terms.”
She was saved from having to frame a suitable reply when the music began at last and they started to waltz.
Ah.
And ah again.
Her mind was incapable of any coherent thought for the next few minutes.
She had not expected him to be graceful, to move as if he had been formed specifically to waltz. Though she might have guessed it if she had ever paused to think about it. Such a man would always see to it that he did everything to perfection-riding, fighting, dancing, dicing, making lo-
There! She was thinking, after all.
But only deep down, where unconscious thoughts dwelled. The rest of her became the music and the rhythm and the swirling colors of gowns and candles and the sound of voices and laughter and the smell of a masculine cologne and the smile of lazy dark eyes.
And she had been perfectly right. The waltz was gloriously romantic when danced with the right m-
Thought was intruding again.
And with it came the rather horrifying suspicion that for several enchanted minutes she had not removed her eyes from his. And that her lips were curved upward into a smile. And that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shining.
And that for several minutes she had been enjoying herself quite mindlessly and quite totally-enjoying waltzing and enjoying the company of a man who danced and twirled her about the ballroom just as if there were no floor beneath their feet.
A dangerous man.
Lord Montford, no less.
And she no better than the green girl she had been three years ago.
She let her smile fade and lowered her eyes. How could she possibly have been enjoying his company? What was she thinking?
She remembered him telling her quite bluntly and insolently and dispassionately about that ghastly wager.
And she wondered again, as she had a thousand or more times since that evening, why he had not completed what he had started and claimed whatever prize there was to claim. She had never wanted to believe-she still did not-that there might be some decency in him, that perhaps he was a man with some conscience. She preferred to believe the explanation he had given at the time-that she had been too easy a prey to be of any real interest to him. Would that have mattered, though, when there was a wager at stake?
“You still hate me,” he said softly.
His voice sounded abject-suspiciously so. There was also surely the suggestion of humor in it. She amused him.
“Are you surprised?” She raised her eyes to his again.
“Not at all,” he said. “You informed me on a certain infamous occasion that I had disappointed you. How can one not hate the person who disappoints one in such a way?”
He was definitely laughing at her. But her effort to think of some suitably cutting retort was thwarted when he twirled her about one corner of the ballroom, using fancy footwork that somehow persuaded her own feet to match it. She laughed with delight before she remembered that she was not delighted at all.
“I could teach you not to hate me, you know,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows.